Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/246

 CHAPTER XXXIV

ITALIAN, GERMAN, AND FRENCH PAGEANT SHIELDS

So closely allied to the products of the other applied sculptural arts of the XVIth century are the beautiful pageant shields of this period, and so little have they to do with actual bodily defence, that we shall only allude to a few of the more famous extant examples, classing them under their nationalities as veritable monuments of the designer's and embosser's art. They, however, bear upon the subject of this work; though, with a few exceptions they were made not for defence, but for purposes of pageantry and of display. These embossed targets, which according to Roquefort, in his Glossaire de la Langue Romanie, occasionally figure in old French inventories as blacon, were carried by or for great princes and nobles; consequently the artist-armourers lavished upon them their best endeavours.

Such pageant shields, too, it must be remembered, were considered fitting gifts from sovereign to sovereign. There is the record in an inventory of arms taken at Augsburg in 1519 of a roundel garnished with black and white bone, partly gilt, and fringed with black samite, a gift from Henry VIII to Maximilian I. In the inventory of the English royal jewels taken in 1528 figures "a tergat of the Passion, with Our Lady and St. George on foot"; while in another of 1530 is included "a silver-gilt buckler with the arms of England, roses, castles, and pomegranates."

ITALIAN SHIELDS

We can do no better than commence our brief account of these works of art by illustrating that superb shield (Fig. 1296), doubtless the finest example known, which is in the Royal Armoury of Madrid, signed by the brothers Negroli of Milan, and dated 1541 (D 64). In this great work of art, which was made by the famous brothers for the Emperor Charles V, can be noted the finest Italian taste of the mid-Renaissance, embodying all that restraint